Amazing how quickly these times go. You think clearly a week is quite a long time to be together, and then we are just getting used to everything and getting down to it, and it is time to say goodbye to one another.
I want to read one Scripture in Revelation 21:7:
He that overcometh shall inherit these things;
and I will be his God,
and he shall be My son.
And Revelation 3:21:
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne,
as I also overcame,
and sat down with My Father in His throne.
And Luke 22:28-29:
But ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptations;
and I appoint unto you a kingdom,
even as My Father appointed unto Me.
Remember that beautiful translation of the New English Bible? “I now vest in you the kingship which My Father vested in Me.”
Shall we pray together?
Dear Lord, we want just simply to bow now in Thy presence this morning, as we come to this last session. We thank Thee for Thy presence in our midst already.
And Lord, as we come to Thy Word now, O Father, Thou knowest our need. We pray that Thou wilt take this last time together in this conference and, Lord, make it, we pray, a meeting with Thyself.
Father, take Thy Word and make it live to our hearts. Tie up some of the strands of this week. Grant that something may be deposited in us by Thy Holy Spirit.
Now, Father, we know that we are not sufficient in ourselves for these things, neither speaker nor hearer. But, Lord, we do praise Thee that both speaker and hearer can say, “Our sufficiency is of God.”
We know, Lord, Thou art sufficient—sufficient to make Thy Word live to us; sufficient, Lord, to make Thy Word dwell in us, so that there will be an outworking of Thy Word.
Father, we just want to recognize together that we need Thee, and we need the gracious ministry of Thy Holy Spirit. We stand by faith in that anointing which is ours. But Thou grant that this time, Lord, will be written in our hearts and in our memories.
For we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
There are just three matters—three points—I would like to underline as we come to the end of these days together.
It is not easy to draw together all that the Lord has sought to say to us in this week. But there are three things about this matter of kingship, three matters about this question of reigning with Christ and overcoming, that I feel very much on my heart to underline.
The first is this: kingship is related to the individual. It is related to the individual.
It would be so easy if this matter of overcoming could be done en masse—if somehow or other we could all get together and hide in one another, and somehow overcome en masse. But there is no such thing as overcoming en masse.
It is very interesting in the Book of Revelation that it ends up with these words: “He that overcometh.”
The Lord is very careful of this matter. He could easily have said, “They that overcome shall inherit.” In His heart, He means that each one must go their way with God, must know the Lord’s dealings with them in an original way. But so that there could be no misunderstanding in this matter, the Lord says, in the singular, “He that overcometh shall inherit these things.”
When our Lord speaks to those seven churches, to each one He says, “He that overcometh shall.” In Revelation 2:7, “To him that overcometh”; then again in Revelation 2:11; Revelation 2:17; Revelation 2:26; Revelation 3:5; Revelation 3:12; and Revelation 3:21: “He that overcometh.”
Now, the Lord is speaking to the churches. It would be the normal thing for Him to say, “They that overcome.” He is speaking to those who know something of corporate life. They know something of being built together. They know something of church life.
These were not the kind of churches that we know today so often. With all their faults and failings, they were true churches. They were expressions of God’s mind concerning the church. They were believers gathered together in Christ, on that one foundation that God had given, in the localities where they lived. So very simple.
They were not Apollonian churches, or Petrine churches, or Pauline churches, or exclusive groups. The only name they had is found in Revelation 1:11: the church in Ephesus, the church in Smyrna, the church in Pergamum, the church in Philadelphia, and the church in Laodicea.
They were the people of God in Ephesus, the people of God in Smyrna, the people of God in Laodicea. They may have had many problems. They may have had much error. Yet they were true churches.
Most interesting of all, when our Lord—the risen Head of the church, the Overcomer—stands in the midst of those seven churches and speaks to them, the lampstand is in its place in all seven churches.
Until that point, the lampstand had not been removed, even from the church at Ephesus, which was by no means the worst. Our Lord says in Revelation 2:5:
Remember therefore whence thou art fallen,
and repent, and do the first works;
or else I come to thee,
and will move thy lampstand out of its place,
except thou repent.
In other words, with all the failings, with all the faults, with all the problems, these were New Testament churches—expressions of the church. The testimony of Jesus was still there. It had not yet been withdrawn.
And still our Lord says, “He that overcometh.”
This matter of kingship is not something that can be produced en masse. I hide in you, you hide in me, and somehow or other we have a kind of second-hand experience. I let the colour of your influence, of your experience, rub off on me. As I hide close to you, somehow the aura of what God is doing in you gets to me, and people think, “Why, listen to so-and-so.” But actually, I am hiding in your life. I am hiding in your experience. Do you understand?
Some people have made a great mistake in this matter of the overcomer. They believe you can get companies of overcomers. Oh, it would be very interesting if you could! If we could separate the overcomers and get them all together in a kind of elite group everywhere—sort of perfect, going on for perfection. But we cannot do it.
The fact of the matter is that kingship—the producing of kingly character, the producing of a capacity and an ability to reign and rule, to have dominion, to be above only and not beneath, to be the head and not the tail—is something that God has to do in every one of us personally.
It has to be a work that He personally does in us. It has to be an original work. No one will ever come to the purpose of God who has not their original experience of the Lamb, their original experience of the discipline of the Lord, their original experience of the fullness of Christ, and their original experience of the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
It has to be a matter between you and the Lord.
Spiritual character is produced by the Lord in you. Sometimes things have to happen to you, and you have to be led a way that is quite inexplicable, in order that the Lord can work in you a capacity for kingship.
We have seen this, I trust, in these days. Some of the things our beloved brother Johannes has been speaking about—the Beatitudes—are things that I want God to do in each one of us, bringing us to that place where, somehow or other, the Spirit of God dwells in us unquenched.
It is the same in all the things we have been saying about faith—overcoming faith. You cannot hide in my faith, and I cannot hide in your faith. You have got to exercise the little grain of faith that God has deposited in you, and I have got to exercise the little grain of faith deposited in me, if we are to come to the throne.
Verily I say unto you,
if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
ye shall say unto this mountain,
Remove hence to yonder place;
and it shall remove;
and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
Abraham heard the Lord’s voice. He saw the God of glory. When he was called, he obeyed and went out, not knowing whither he went.
Likewise, we have got to have our own experience of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, of resurrection life and power. I cannot hide in your life; you cannot hide in mine.
You may have the most wonderful experience of the fullness of the Lord, and I may spend years hiding in your fullness, until there comes a day when you are taken. Then suddenly I come to reality: I have lived in your experience, not my own. No overcomer can do that.
You and I have got to know what it is to be transformed. Most of us always wish that one another were transformed. We can see only too clearly the need for transformation in others. But each one of us has got to be changed into the same image, from glory to glory.
We have to know personally what it is to be perfected through suffering, to be brought to full growth, to completeness, to full-endedness. Every one of us. I cannot do it for you, and you cannot do it for me.
I can be in a company that is the most glorious company in the world, and yet, just because it is a glorious company that knows the presence of the Lord and hears His voice, I can hide. I can hide in that corporate experience of the Lord’s presence.
If you and I are to come to the throne of Christ, we have got to know in our own lives a deep, deep, personal, original working of God.
We have got to know the Lord for ourselves. We have got to experience alone for ourselves. We have got to possess our possessions for ourselves.
Your feet cannot possess my inheritance. The soles of my feet have got to go down on my inheritance if I am to have my little vine and fig tree under which I can sit. Do you understand? You cannot do that for me. I have to do it.
Like Caleb, I have to say, “Give me this mountain,” and go in and put my feet down on it. Then the mountain of Hebron was given to him and became the lot of his inheritance forever.
So it must be for you and for me, for God has no grandchildren. Every one of us has to have our own first-hand experience of the Lord.
Now, that is the first thing. The second thing I want to say is this: kingship, this matter of reigning with Christ, this matter of overcoming, is related to the church of God.
You notice how the Lord Jesus stands as the Overcomer, the risen Son of God, the Head of the church, in the midst of those seven churches. They represent the whole church of God on earth, in time and locality. There He is in the midst, and He speaks to every one of them. They are true churches, as I have said.
This matter of kingship, this matter of overcoming, this matter of coming to the throne of the Lamb, is related to the purpose of God.
It is no good just seeing overcoming in personal, individual terms. That would be a great mistake. It goes without saying that you must have your own personal experience of the Lord, that your feet must personally be on the foundation, that you must be established, and that you must know the Lord for yourself.
But how can you possibly know anything about kingship if you are not related to the eternal purpose of God?
It was His purpose right from the beginning that you and I should have dominion, that we should know what it is to reign, govern, control, supervise, and administer. How can you and I administer the will of God if we are unrelated to the purpose of God? It is not possible, is it?
Furthermore, it is also a question of being related to the phase of the purpose of God in which we are.
It is no good just saying, “Ah, the Reformation—wonderful what happened in the Reformation. I so enjoy all those things that were recovered in the Reformation.” Or perhaps you are very thrilled about the Quaker experience, or the Methodist and Wesleyan experience. Perhaps you think the Brethren movement was the most tremendous thing that ever happened. Or perhaps you come later down to something else.
But, my dear friend, all I know is this: it says of David that he “served the counsel of God in his own generation.”
The problem with most Christians is that we are all serving the counsel of God according to a past generation.
Overcoming must be related not only to the heart of God—to the purpose that has been in God from the beginning—but also to that phase in God’s purpose in which we find ourselves, in the generation in which we live.
Do you understand what I am trying to say?
If the phase that we are in is recovery, then I must somehow or other be related to that recovery. I cannot come to the throne unless I am.
People get such strange ideas when they begin to see something of the purpose of God. We are all the same. When we see one truth, we sell everything else. We are so finite as human beings that we seem able to contain only one piece at a time. So once we see something, out goes the rest.
You have either got people all for evangelism, or you have got them all for the deepening of spiritual life. Those all for the deepening of spiritual life think evangelism is kindergarten stuff—rushing around trying to get people saved and believing the Lord. They think the great thing is to get a deeper experience of the Lord.
Then people begin to see the house of God and say, “Ah, it is all milk, all that other stuff. Conferences? What have conferences got to do with the house of God? What has evangelism got to do with the house of God?”
We have seen something, and we are going to give ourselves to what we have seen. We become funny little inner groups, you know what I mean—sort of all looking at each other and all talking about the deep, deep things.
How strange we become. God must weep at times, if I may so speak of Him, over the eccentricities of His people.
But, dear child of God, when some of us begin to see the purpose of God for our day, and begin to see something of the house of God and what the Lord is seeking to do concerning it, we tend to look back in church history and say, “Oh, Martin Luther, he did not see certain things. Wesley? He did not see. Zinzendorf? Even the early Brethren, we feel, only saw in part.”
Then comes the thought: “I never saw a thing.” You know the kind of spirit.
But, my dear friend, I want to tell you something: God never expected of Martin Luther anything more than what He revealed to him.
Insofar as Martin Luther, Zinzendorf, and others gave themselves at that point in time to the recovery that God was seeking to do, they were overcomers. God never wanted them to go ahead. He only wanted them to obey what He showed them.
Now, when God shows us something, He wants us to obey whatever it is. It is no good going on and on about justification by faith if now what God is showing is that we should be built together and see the house of God completed.
I would rather stand at the end in the presence of God, whatever the world thought of me and whatever Christians thought of me, having followed the Lamb whithersoever He goes in this age, in my part.
I cannot follow the Lamb whithersoever He went hundreds of years ago. Do you understand what I am trying to say? In my generation, I can only follow the Lamb in what He is seeking to do. If I serve the counsel of God in my own generation, that is all God requires of me.
It was a wonderful thing that P. T. Forsyth said when he was dying. I have often thought it was the most glorious way to die. There he was, hardly weighing more than a few stone, just skin over bones, and his last words—almost his last uttered words—were, “Everything that the Lord commanded me to do, I have done it.”
I think that is the most wonderful way to die: that there was not in one’s conscience one thing that the Lord specifically asked of us which we did not do.
How can anyone be an overcomer if he is not related to the purpose of God, if he is not related to that phase of the purpose of God in which we find ourselves in the generation in which we are living?
I want you to see something else in this matter of kingship, or overcoming, as related to the house of God.
There were very unhappy conditions in most of these churches. I think there are only barely one or two at the most to which you could say the Lord had nothing to say by way of correction. The rest had very unhappy conditions.
Yet our Lord says to those in them, “He that overcometh.” You are to stay there until the lampstand is removed.
You cannot go until the lampstand is removed. Once the lampstand is removed, you go.
I remember years ago speaking to a marvellous old lady from California. I have never forgotten the conversation I had with that dear old prayer warrior. She said to me, “You know, I was a Methodist. It got more dead, and more dead, and more dead. The sermons became more liberal, and more liberal, and more liberal. I stuck it out year after year.”
Then she said, “In the end, I suddenly saw something, and I left. Do you know what they said to me? ‘How can you leave the sinking ship?’”
She said, “I said to them, ‘The captain is in the lifeboat.’”
My dear friend, it is a very silly thing to stay in the sinking ship if the captain has got into the lifeboat. If the captain is still at the bridge, there may be something special with our Captain in staying in the ship even if it goes down, because He is able to raise us from the dead.
We shall have a wonderful experience at the bottom of the sea and then walk back up again with Him in a tremendously powerful resurrection. Thank God for that. If my Captain is in the ship and staying there, I shall stay.
But if I once see that the Captain has dropped into the lifeboat, I am getting out immediately. There is no hope for the ship.
It is not that God will not bless those who stay, as we said the other day, in exile, to use another picture. But, my dear friend, if you and I want to be on the throne, if we want to be part of that purpose of God, then we have got to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes.
But hear this: this whole matter of overcoming and kingship has very much to do with our relationship to one another in the house of God.
Have you ever noticed that extraordinary little word in 1 Corinthians 11? It is generally overlooked in that marvellous chapter. It is verse 19:
For there must be also factions among you,
that they that are approved
may be made manifest among you.
Why are we so afraid of problems in the companies? Once we really are on the foundation of Christ, once we know the Spirit of God beginning to work, why are we so afraid? There must at times be all kinds of things that bubble up to the surface, but, if God is at work, those who are approved will be made manifest.
Those whose spirit is right; those who can lay down their lives for the Lord and for their brethren; those who know something of perfect love, which endures all things and never fails—these will be made manifest.
I tell you something, dear child of God: it is much easier to bear the anger, hatred, and antagonism of the world than to bear the scorn, derision, and dislike of a brother or sister. That is the hardest thing in the world: when someone who is of the same family does not like you.
Now, dear child of God, it takes two to make a division. Never forget it. You cannot have a division with one person. Two people have got to react against each other. But if one person keeps on laying down their life, the other person cannot make a division. Do you understand?
If two people are on a collision course, God will let you bang your heads together until you are knocking each other out. The Lord will say, “Well, all right, carry on.”
But there may come a day when one of you says, “I am laying down my life. I am going to love that person. I am going to be a doormat. I am going to let them do what they want. I am going to let them say what they want. I am going to love them, and love them, and love them.”
You have got out of the way. Now God says, “That person is on a collision course with Me. My child has gone down; I am here.”
It was an old Puritan divine who said, “You take care of your good conscience; God will take care of your good name.”
Do you want to know what it is to reign? Then you must humble yourself, and God will exalt you. But how do you humble yourself? What need is there to humble yourself unless someone is being difficult with you?
What shall we all do—come in and all look humble? Many people have got this strange idea about humility: if you sit at the back, you are humble. Of course, it is nonsense. Most of the proud ones sit at the back.
Someone may say, “Oh, no, no, no, I cannot play the piano. I cannot play.” But if someone says, “Their playing is like a cross between Arabic music and a cat song,” that person is furious. “How dare anyone describe my playing in such terms?”
But did you not say you could not play? If you said you could not play, why are you expecting someone to praise you?
It is the same with people who say they cannot speak. “Oh, I cannot speak.” But let someone say something about them, and they are furious. They may not be sure that they will come again.
You see, it is only when people start to say things about us that we have to humble ourselves. Thank God, there was a Danish pastor, P. P. Johnson, who used always to give, I think it was, five kroner to anybody who said something bad about him.
He solemnly used to take out his five kroner, give it to them, and say, “This is for keeping me humble.”
We do not like that, do we?
We can talk until we are blue in the face about Christian character, spiritual character, the need to let go, and the need to lay down our lives. But when we get the opportunity, we hate it.
My dear friends, all of you have got opportunities in your family life, in your home life, and above all in your church life.
The church is a very impolite place. Sooner or later, someone will say something that upsets you. They will either say, “You are long-winded; what you have got to say has not much value,” or, “You never ever do anything.”
Sooner or later, someone will say something.
Sometimes it is those people who have locked themselves in, who have never committed themselves, who will say this and that. Those who have got the most of the Lord take it all so much to heart. Oh, they grieve over it; they get lost in it.
Dear child of God, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Just allow the Lord to do it. The approved of God will be made manifest among you.
You see, this matter of overcoming is not only a personal thing; it is related to the house of God.
Even when there is something wrong among us, our attitude to it and the way we go to it are matters of overcoming. Some people get so curious about things that belong wrong. They are going to do this, and they are going to have that person put out. Oh, my!
We forget what it says in the Word: we must never touch sin; we must never become partakers in other men’s sins; but love covers a multitude of sins.
The rabbis say that that word originally came from adultery. If a partner discovered that the other had committed adultery, they could go to the elders, and if it was proven, their husband or wife could be stoned to death. But they could also forgive.
When they forgave, it was forgiven. Love covers a multitude—not condoning it, so it did not have to come out into the open—but forgiveness had to be honoured, and it was given.
What an interesting word it is in Galatians 6:1:
Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass,
ye who are spiritual, restore such a one
in a spirit of gentleness;
looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
This is all a matter of overcoming. Sometimes it is our brothers’ and sisters’ trespasses that find us out. If we cover them in a wrong way, we fail. If we do not restore them in a right way, we have failed. You get what I mean?
In Romans 15:7, it says:
Wherefore receive ye one another,
even as Christ also received you,
to the glory of God.
How did Christ receive me? He received me as a sinner. That is how I have got to receive you: as a sinner saved by grace. Set the minimum ground upon which I must receive you.
But most of us do not receive one another like that. We receive one another according to whether we think they are going on, whether they are on the way to perfection, whether they are tremendous. Because we ourselves have been dealt with here, we expect you immediately to come up to the standard that God has given us. That is part of our problem.
Would it not be nice if you and I could get away to some little place—I dream about it now and again—with not another human being in sight? You have to be very proud, like me, to want such a place, because our idea is that if we could get there, we could overcome.
Oh, we would have the whale of a time with the Lord: none of the problems of human beings, none of the complexities that come with them, none of the tangles, strains, tensions, or criticisms.
But that is not the way you come to the throne.
The throne is to do with people. It is not just governing natural laws. On the whole, natural laws take care of themselves. The throne of God is to do with people, with nations.
The only way you and I can come to the throne is by being with people, learning to know people, allowing the Lord to deal with us through people.
I think I told you before the story of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that tremendous preacher of the last century, one of the greatest preachers Britain has ever known.
Thousands upon thousands used to come to hear him. But every single Monday morning, by the hand of some unknown servant, a letter was delivered to Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s private home. It was from a sister who used to sit through both Sunday meetings and note down every single thing that was wrong.
She noted any mistakes in diction, grammar, theology, or delivery, and then made a general comment on the whole.
Do you know that the great Charles Haddon Spurgeon nearly came to a nervous breakdown? It nearly brought him to the end of his ministry.
It is hard for us to realize that such a small thing could do it. But you know, elephants are frightened to death of mice. It is a very strange thing. You think that the great giant-type Charles Haddon Spurgeon could only be frightened by another giant. But no—he so feared that Monday morning letter coming.
For a long time he told no one what was in the letter, until eventually he went to some brethren and said, “I cannot go on anymore. I am reduced to nothing.”
They could not help him. They said, “Well, find the person and put her out. Why should a great ministry like this, under the anointing, be brought to an end by some silly little, mean, narrow-minded sister?”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon began to seek the Lord about the whole thing. He began seeking the Lord to find out who it was so that action could be taken about this thorn in the flesh.
Then, in one of his quiet times, the Lord said to him, “You want Me to remove your treasure?”
“Treasure? What treasure?”
“This treasure.”
“But she is my destruction!”
“No,” the Lord said. “She is your treasure, because she is working in you a very precious treasure.”
From then on, Charles Haddon Spurgeon always referred to her as his treasure. As far as I know, she went on writing her wretched little letter to the day he died.
Now, many of us have got treasures. Some of us are married to them. We have treasures in the house of God—people through whom God makes us overcome.
If we go down, we shall go on. But if you say, “I will not go down. I will not allow this to happen anymore,” and you try to be up, you will collapse.
When you let go, you go down, and you find you are above. Oh, you are no longer the tail; you are the head.
Lastly, I would like to say something about kingship related to the house of God and the world.
It is our job, as the house of God, as the church of God, as the body of Christ, to rule and reign now. We are not meant to wait until the millennium, or wait until the ages to come, before we reign.
We are meant here and now to sit together with Christ in heavenly places. We are meant here and now, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to bind things on earth and to loose things on earth.
The Lord did not say, “Bind things in the church.” He did not say, “I have given thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatsoever thou shalt bind in the church shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose in the church shall be loosed in heaven.”
He said, “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
It is said of our Lord Jesus Christ in Psalm 110, that great Messianic psalm, verse 2:
The Lord will send forth the rod of Thy strength out of Zion:
rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.
But our Lord is at the right hand of God. What does it mean, “Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies”? It means that He has risen triumphant and victorious. He rules and reigns through His body, even on earth.
That is what He wants to bring you and me to. He wants to bring us to the place where we can declare the kingship of Christ over this earth.
David thought this now and again:
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians—those who were heathen, those who worshipped idols—the world and they that dwell therein belong to the Lord. That is our declaration.
Not, “The earth will be the Lord’s,” but, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” What a declaration!
Dear child of God, we are an advance party of the kingdom. We are here on this earth declaring that this earth belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ask of Me,
and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
I am not saying that we should do things apart from Christ. Oh no, not at all. You cannot bind what is not the will of heaven to bind on earth. You cannot loose on earth what is not the mind of Christ to loose on earth.
But once we know by the Spirit what is the mind of the Lord, then we have a job to protest the will of God and declare the mind of God in the secret place—the spirit world.
It is not to do with the Kremlin and the White House. It is not to do with London, Paris, Rome, or Peking. This is the spiritual world. Behind all these things are principalities, powers, world rulers of this darkness, and hosts of wicked spirits in heavenly places.
There are satanic strongholds—strongholds of satanic strength—imaginations and high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. Thoughts.
Communism began with a thought in the head of a calm man called Karl Marx. The thoughts of Chairman Mao—these thoughts can be brought into captivity by the weapons God has given us in Christ.
Now, I am not suggesting for a moment that we should take on things too big for us. Everything must begin with inquiry.
If you just get hold of this as a truth and say, “We are going to rule the nation; we are going to go out; we are going to do this and that,” my dear friend, before long you will be no longer here.
But if we, as the house of God, built together under the covering of fellowship and kept tight in God, begin to inquire of the Lord, and know that the Lord’s will is not this, not this, and not this, then we can declare, “It shall not be. It shall not be.”
It says in the Word of God, somewhere in 2 Peter 3, that we can hasten the coming of the day of God. My dear friend, Satan also tries to hasten the coming of that night in which no man can work. It is our job to see that that night does not come one hour before God’s time.
Many a time we have a kind of Muslim, Islamic, fatalistic conception of the sovereignty of God: “What will be, will be. The world is going to get worse and worse, so we just leave it.”
No, my friend, not so.
Ye are the salt of the earth.
If the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? We should be the salt in the towns, villages, and cities in which we are found. We should be the salt in the nation in which we are found. We stop corruption. We preserve what is right.
It is no good believers blaming the whole thing on the nation, upon unbelievers, or upon the majority of the church. My dear friend, God puts His finger, as Johannes said last night—and I agree with him entirely—upon us.
Judgment must begin at the house of God.
God puts His finger on us and says, “Are you allowing this to happen? Are you just accepting it so that Satan can do anything?”
It is not that we want you to talk with Satan, get into conversations with demons, or start uncovering yourself. No. Start to declare that Jesus is Lord.
What a wonderful thing it is to be able to declare that Jesus is Lord. Worship.
Kenny spoke about worship, and how wonderful it was. It is much more than even our pouring out of our hearts to the Lord. When we worship the Lord, we declare what He is.
We do not say, “Lord, please do this. Please do that. Please be almighty. Please be proper.” We bow down: “O Lord God, King of kings, Lord of lords, we declare Thy greatness. We declare Thy majesty.”
At this, the powers of darkness are paralysed by our declaration.
Even the Lord’s Table is a declaration of something—a declaration of His death, that through death He destroyed him that had the power of death.
My friends, if we could only learn what it is to reign with Christ now, would it not make a great difference?
Keys—small little things, keys. But, oh my, what problems you get when they are lost! If we have a key, we can get into a car within a second. If we have a key, we can get into our home in a second. But if we have lost the keys, we can be held up for hours, trying to find somebody who can get in or somehow prise open the window.
What a wonderful word it is in Deuteronomy 28, those words with which we began this week:
And the Lord will set thee on high
above all the nations of the earth.
Does He not want this for the church now? Set on high above the nations of the earth, if we will only hearken to the Lord’s voice.
And He says, in Deuteronomy 28:7:
The Lord will cause thine enemies
that rise up against thee
to be smitten before thee:
they shall come out against thee one way,
and shall flee before thee seven ways.
Then He says in Deuteronomy 28:10:
And all the peoples of the earth
shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord;
and they shall be afraid of thee.
I remember some years ago, when we were together in Richmond and had learned some of these lessons, there was a lady who was an alcoholic with a family of four little children. Oh, she was an impossible person. Touching, trusting the Lord, she went by.
She was a waitress in a restaurant nearby to the house where we met together. Then we found out that an evil man, a publican—a licensed seller of liquor—was selling her liquor when she could not even pay for it. He was putting it all on debt, so that he got her into his hands.
We prayed and sought the Lord. We were so angry about it. In the end, I do not normally get very angry, but I got so angry that I went down to that place, went into the licensed shop, and asked to see the manager.
He came out, and I said, “How dare you sell liquor to such a child of God?” He went absolutely red. He said, “You must be mad.”
I said, “I am not mad. But I will tell you one thing: in the name of the Lord Jesus, a curse is upon you unless you stop doing this.”
He said, “But the law says I must.”
“The law tells you that you can give liquor to someone who cannot pay for it?”
He argued and argued. He threatened to get the police and have me thrown out. I said, “Now listen here, my man: in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, a curse is upon this place.”
Of course, I went home and then I had a bad time. I sat down with a cup of tea and thought to myself, “Oh, how could you do such a thing? You should not curse a person like that.”
But within two weeks he had shut up, because he took it so seriously that the place was cursed. He told the neighbours, “I am getting out,” and he got out.
That, I believe, is in one way what it means to reign. I am not saying, “Oh, go about cursing people.” But when unrighteousness and evil come in, should we not deal with it?
I remember another occasion when one of our boys, who was a fine young man, became a heroin addict. Of course, he was a heroin addict through pain. He came to us and was marvellously saved. He went clean for a whole year.
Then, in the night, some of his old dope peddlers began to tap on the window. When he opened it, they offered him heroin, and he went back on it.
Could you believe it—that someone would climb up a drainpipe and tap on his window? When I heard about it, we prayed about the whole thing. Then I asked one of the brothers, who was a schoolteacher and lived in the area where this man lived, to find out where he was.
I said, “You go to him, knock on the door, and tell him that if he dares to sell another bit of heroin—or anything else in that world—to one of God’s children, he will be cut off.”
This young man turned round that evening and said to me, “How can you do such a thing? Is it white magic or black magic?”
I said, “It is neither white magic nor black magic. You are dealing in destruction. You are deliberately destroying men and women so that you can fatten yourself on their destruction. So, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, a curse is upon you.”
That man got out of that house with his wife and went to Morocco, because he said to someone, “That house is cursed. I have got to get out of it.” I never meant the house; I meant his house.
His wife died in Morocco, and he committed suicide. That was the end of that evil place.
Now again, I am not telling you to go around doing that. I want you to understand that there is a place that the church should be in:
They shall be afraid of thee.
But are they afraid of us? Most of the world thinks of us as a bunch of friends. “What can they do—singing their little hymns, saying their little prayers, reading their precious Scriptures? They never have any effect upon the nation, the city, or the town.”
But, my dear friends, if we have been raised with Christ, joined to the risen Christ, and made to sit together with Him in heavenly places, surely there must be some effect upon the cities and towns in which we are.
Dear America, I wonder whether you people who are citizens of this nation realize what America means. Can you imagine what it would mean for freedom if America fell?
My dear friend, I do not want you to be merely political or nationalistic. But you have a responsibility laid upon your shoulders to pray for your nation.
If we in Denmark and Britain contend days in prayer for your presidential election, it is a great shock to us to find that you never pray.
If we are called by God to fast and pray for nights and days because we believe that whoever gets into that White House is going to determine the course of this nation more than many others who will come before, it is not political. It is a question of knowing the Lord’s mind, ruling and reigning.
We are not praying for Democrat or Republican. We are praying that God’s will will be done. If in our spirit we sense that this is the will of God, then we want to pray the will of God through. We want to reign and rule.
We have had so many experiences at home. You see, dear friends, be careful here in America that you are not living in a fool’s paradise. You have that great sea all around you, but the enemy can get to you.
We on our side are very conscious that our time is running out. We know how easy it would be for us to be occupied within a matter of a few days. We have watched evil taking over our trade unions, taking over our colleges, and God began to burden us.
We began to pray for some of those unions. What happened was this: the Communists lost election after election after election. The people of God in Britain prayed that God would hold back the tide of these evils.
We can do it. It is only that we know we have only a little time. We know there is going to come a day when God says, “Now the night. Now the day of Britain’s fall.” When that happens, we shall stop praying like that and pray, “God, save them in their distress. Save them in their unhappiness. Save them, Lord, in their brokenness.”
But until that day comes, we will not allow the enemy to come in one single hour before the time of God.
Why should we abandon a nation in which we have been saved and which has meant so much to the purposes of God? Why should we surrender? Is that nationalism? No. It is a question of the purpose of God.
And so, dear child of God, the Lord says:
I now vest in you the kingship
which My Father vested in Me.
How are you doing in this matter?
The Lord Jesus says:
He that overcometh
will I give to sit down with Me in My throne,
even as I also overcame,
and sat down with My Father in His throne.
If our Lord Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us, may the Spirit of God bring into our hearts something of the burden of His heart: for the glory of God; for the recovery of the house of God; for the salvation of precious souls in the nations in which they are found; and for the holding back of evil until God’s time.
Shall we pray?
Oh, Lord, we are all so unworthy and so insignificant. But, precious, precious Lord, we ask Thee together: put Thy hand upon us.
Let these times we have had together not be lost nor forgotten, but watch over Thy Word to perform it, Lord, we pray.
If there has been anything untoward that has been said this morning, blot it out of our minds. But, O Lord, what is of Thyself, write it here in our spirit.
We want to be people who hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Grant that this may be so, for we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.